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Monday, 3 March 2014

the use of retard,and what intelectual disability is all about

now this is a real hatred of mine.

as its probably known by any readers of the blog,am completely against the term retarded or the out of date DSM diagnostic label mental retardation.
will face plant palm every time see an aspie or a NT use the terms because they dont understand the near and far consequences retard/mentaly retarded has on someone who is intelectualy disabled.

heres why...............

a]am intelectualy disabled [AKA learning disabled in UK definition] and am directly affected by the godawful and just wrong word.

b]retard is a highly dehumanizing,bigoted,elitist and limiting word that directly affects a group of very vulnerable people whether its being aimed at an NT,a high functioning disabled person or an intelectualy disabled person,its outdated and shoud be in the past with hitler.

c]mental retardation as a label is outdated and no longer in use;it was finaly changed in the DSM manual last year along with the autism changes that were made,but unfortunately a number of americans didnt seem to notice this and carried on calling us mentaly retarded and not intelectualy disabled.
in fact,for the past several years;many american organisations have been swapping to intelectual disability so there was no excuse.
some people who have got no idea have said theres nothing wrong with the label so they wont change their useage; that just shows a massive lack of respect for a group of vulnerable disabled people who in many cases woud not be able to sit here and stick up for themselves on the internet like am doing now.

d]mental retardation as a label is untrue.
those of us with intelectual disability dont have a slow mind we have a limited mental capacity which gives less room for storage of data-this has a knock on effect on our functioning,understanding and learning level. even as adults we have high support needs,significant difficulties with understanding basic concepts, with personal care and toileting, with language and communication,we have no concept of danger, we have difficulty comparing ourselves to others and dont understand differences in people-some of us are unable to discriminate at all which in itself is a gift in society. we lack self awareness of our limited mental capacity; people who think they have ID because they are slower learners/thinkers than others do not have ID;we dont have the capacity to recognise ourselves as limited and to compare ourselves to others in that way to make a judgement, have often seen people say they think they have/or they have ID but are not diagnosed; on the internet,and they will say how difficult they have it,how slow they are,how behind they are etc; that is a whole load of self awareness and social understanding we do not have, people who write stuff like that seem to have low self esteem or seem to crave being patronised and treated as a lower level than they are-those of us who have genuine ID do not feel any borders or limits nor do we like being patronised.

e]just because we have intelectual disability it doesnt mean we cant have smarts,we may be less complex than others in our topics of choice but we can be just as passionate and dedicated about something as anyone else.

f]the use of retard as a slur,towards a bunch of foolish NTs for example is ignorant,childish and discriminative, people who use it as a slur dont seem to realise the term is associated with US, and by calling people retards for doing something foolish they are comparing their behavior to ours, it is sub conciously abusing us-not them,we are the ones who are being compared with people who can help whatever stupid behavior they are doing,please stop associating us with whoever it is; we are neither retards nor the fools doing that behavior.

g]we have intelectual disability,we DO NOT have the mind of a child,those of us who are adults have an adults mind;we spent our whole lives earning adulthood just like everyone else we deserve the same respect; we just have a limited mental capacity [read >d<].
treating us like children in adult bodies is sickening,dehumanizing and so ignorant and prejudiced.